20th anniversaries only come around once and I’m making a big fuss for one of my favorite shows, The X-Files–IMHO, one of the best TV shows ever.
So in the spirit of tradition, here are some of my votes for best and worst of The X-Files. Previously, I did best and worst episodes. Now let’s get down to the really important stuff.
Best Gruesome Deaths
15. Drowned in liquid nitrogen. Roland
14. Stung to death by virus-carrying bees. Zero Sum
13. Eaten by a giant python. Die Hand Die Verletzt
12. Stabbed in the stomach with an oil can spout. Blood
11. Cocooned alive by thousands of glowing insects. Darkness Falls
10. Dying from the effects of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease after consuming a man with the disease. Our Town
9. Sucked dry by a spider/alien thingie that crawled out of a fake-human’s mouth. Travelers
8. Being beaten to death by the inbred Peacock brothers, who were just gross. Home
7. Ex-sanguinated by 8-year-old daughter. Eve
6. Brain-sucked by giant invisible insect. Folie a Deux
5. Live, carnivorous liver extraction by Eugene Victor Tooms. Squeeze, Tooms
4. Lipids Hoover’ed from body by fat-sucking vampire. 2Shy
3. Consumed alive by creature who regurgitated remains in order to rid victim of illness. (Technically, they were resurrected, but … ew.) The Gift
2. Eaten from within by giant fluke. The Host
And, in my humble opinion, the most disgusting death ever on The X-Files comes from the grossest episode ever:
1. Contracting a fatal illness after being infected by bugs that exploded from undulating pustules in a guy’s face. F. Emasculata
On a related note:
Greatest Chalk Outline Ev.er
The remains of the scientist whose head was frozen in liquid nitrogen and then shattered. Roland
Best Guest Actors
- Peter Boyle as Clyde Bruckman, the psychic insurance salesman. Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose
- Giovanni Ribisi, the first time most of us saw him, as homicidal lightning-strike survivor Darin Peter Oswald. DPO
- Tracey Ellis as damaged abuse survivor Lucy Householder. Oubliette
- Charles Nelson Reilly, being Charles Nelson Reilly and awesome. Jose Chung’s From Outer Space
- Joe Spano as a conscientious crash investigator whose world gets spun. Tempus Fugit/Max
- Kristin Lehman as uber-gothchick Esther Nairn. Killswitch
- Hard-boiled blind girl Marty Glenn, as embodied by the frequent girlcrush goddess Lili Taylor. Mind’s Eye
- Crusty old dude Geoffrey Lewis playing crusty really-old-dude Alfred Fellig, the photographer with a nose for death. Tithonus
-
Carrie Hamilton (Carol Burnett’s daughter who died of cancer three years after this episode) gives a quivering mess of a performance as a haunted woman trapped in a deadly time-loop. Monday
- Jesse L. Martin is simply transcendant in his portrayal of a misfit alien who just wants to live to love baseball. The Unnatural
- CCH Pounder came to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and she was all out of bubblegum, as Agent Kazdin, totally in charge of Duane Barry’s hostage negotiation team. Duane Barry/Ascension
Best Humor
12. Quagmire
Scully: “… you’re like Ahab. You’re so… consumed by your personal vengeance against life, whether it be its inherent cruelties or its mysteries, that everything takes on a warped significance to your megalomaniacal cosmology.”
Mulder: “Scully, are you coming onto me?”
Only The X-Files could get away with this level of nerdy, wordy flirting, all while our heroes are searching for the equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. I even laughed when Scully’s dog Queegqueg was eaten, and I love dogs.
11. X-Cops
Pitch-perfect parody of Cops, only with more werewolves.
10. How the Ghosts Stole Christmas
“Paramasturbatory?” With more gore and chills than most serial killer movies, this Christmas carol from the creators of The X-Files has a twinkle in its bloodied eye, mostly thanks to Lily Tomlin and Ed Asner as the playfully homicidal ghosts.
9. Arcadia
Mulder and Scully’s foray into suburban married life, complete with Dick Van Dyke show references and deals with arcane killer gods. Good times.
8. Humbug
Let’s face it, Darin Morgan was funny. All four of his scripts appear in this list and he helped on some of the others. This one is non-stop fun. One of many favorite lines:
Lanny, the man with the partial twin sticking from his side: “Mr. Nut, the kind-hearted manager here, convinced me that to make a living by publicly displaying my deformity lacked dignity. So… now I carry other people’s luggage.”
7. Post-Modern Prometheus
Not as funny a Frankenstein parody as Young Frankenstein, but then again, what is? The townspeople who look suspectly like animals in the genetic-freakazoid town are great, as is J. Peterman himself (John O’Hurley) as the mad scientist. “Because I can!”
6. Dreamland I and II
Self-indulgent, yes, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a hoot as Mulder plays domestic while Scully has to put up with a butt-slapping, smoking, ass-kissing Mulder.
5. Bad Blood
The vampire episode played for laughs. Well-played.
4. Unusual Suspects
The origin story of the best comic sidekicks on the show would have to be funny as The Lone Gunmen discover Mulder and the conspiracy. Frohike to Langley, in jail: “You know, with that long, blond hair, you’ll be the first one in here that gets traded for cigarettes.”
3. Small Potatoes
Writer Darin Morgan is funny as an actor, too, as he plays the loser who transforms himself into Mulder to get some play with Scully. (This one was written by also-funny writer Vince Gilligan.)
Scully: “I don’t imagine you need to be told this, Mulder, but you’re not a loser.”
Mulder: “Yeah, but I’m not Eddie van Blundht either, am I?”
2. Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose
Darin Morgan’s genius was such that one of the best, most poignant and most popular episodes was also one of the funniest. Guest star Peter Boyle out-deadpanned even Mulder.
Bruckman (looking at Mulder’s badge): “I’m supposed to believe that’s a real name?”
1. Jose Chung’s From Outer Space
Darin Morgan, are you surprised? Nobody parodied The X-Files, the seriousness, the muddled alien/government/military connections, better than the show itself.
Jose Chung: “I don’t know which was more disturbing, his description of the inner core reincarnated souls’ sex orgy, or the fact that the whole thing was written in screenplay format.”
(An abductee, explaining how Mulder and Scully were really Men In Black): “One of them was disguised as a woman, but wasn’t pulling it off. Like, her hair was red, but it was a little too red, y’know?”
Scully: “That was Detective Manners. He said they just found your bleeping UFO.”
Okay, that’s enough for now. Whew. I Loved this show.
My Sister’s Cats: A Story About Commitment
A year ago last fall, after 15 years battling one medical setback after another, she called me, crying, and asked me to take her half-Siamese, partly feral cat Tinker to a shelter. She was too sick and weak and couldn’t handle his needs anymore.
The C Word
It didn’t occur to me to take him. I didn’t have a steady job and was living in a friend’s basement. I was a dog person and didn’t really get cats. And I was terrified of commitment, especially not being able to take care of animals. I tried to find someone among my cat people friends, but no new owner materialized.
One of the many permanent wounds of Andrea’s life was losing her then-3-year-old son to Social Services. Wondering where he was, if
he was okay, if she should have fought harder to keep him. I couldn’t imagine taking Tinks to a shelter, even a good no-kill place, and leaving him there to fend for himself. Our mom and other sister Beth had shouldered most of the responsibility for taking care of Andrea, but neither of them could take Tinks.
Time for me to grow up a little and commit. My housemate, a lifelong cat person herself, said yes and I was so relieved to be able to tell my sister that I would take her boy cat.
Tinks
As the story goes, Andrea had found out her neighbor was beating up on the alley cat he’d taken in. She stormed over and took Tinker away, blending him in with her older cat Daisy. He hid whenever I came over. I’d barely seen him except once when he let me pet him until he bit me.
Picking him up was both easier and more painful than I’d imagined. Andrea, barely able to walk or breathe, managed to wrestle him into the cat carrier, managed to keep it together, managed to let him go. But it was the last thing she wanted to do. She knew her time to go was near or she never would have given up her Tinkie.
He yowled all the way to his new home but once there, went tharn and wouldn’t come out of his carrier. Andrea and my Facebook
friends said to leave him alone and let him come to me. After three days, he came out of his hiding place and started eating. Another week and he let me play with him. I was amazed as he slowly began to adapt, to trust again, to accept me as the person who would be taking care of him. After a few weeks, Andrea asked if I liked having a cat and I could honestly answer yes.
Daisy
Around Thanksgiving, the fistula they’d put in Andrea’s leg for easier dialysis failed again. She had to go into the hospital for the thousandth time. Others had always taken care of the cats when Andrea was away. This time I said I’d go feed Daisy. I had the feeling she should get to know me.
December 1st, 2012
Less than a week later, Andrea was home when the fistula burst open again. She was alone in her apartment except for Daisy–Mom made it there before Andrea was completely gone but she was unresponsive.
Then the hospital scenes. Waiting in the private room where they pull families aside to give them bad news. The doctor coming in to tell us Andrea couldn’t be revived. Crying, viewing the body, praying, phone calls. Touching my sister’s cold arm, I promised her that I would do everything in my power to keep her babies warm and safe and dry.
Beth and I went to get Daisy. The little cat waiting alone for the mom who would never come home. Daisy hid in her usual place behind the entertainment center, running away through my sister’s blood, the chaos of the EMTs trying to save her. Mom had tried to warn us about all the blood, but of course you never really–
All the way home, I worried about Daisy, that she wouldn’t be okay, that she couldn’t bond with anyone else. But she came out of the carrier after a few hours, or at least tried to–Tinks had become used to being an only cat and didn’t want to let her out. Scraggly and reeking of my sister’s cigarette smoke, she still crawled onto my lap and let me pet her. She was okay, a small miracle.
Trips to the Vet
Only not so okay. Less than a month later, she got a nasty UTI, which led to hyperthyroid pills, which led to a diagnosis of kidney failure. She was very sick and the vet didn’t know how long she had. I received just the smallest taste of what it must have been like for my mother, rushing her daughter to the ER, tending to her, getting her meds, wondering how bad it was, unable to sleep for worry. But I was grateful Daisy’s body had waited until after my sister left to fall apart. Too awful for Andrea to have to know about that.
Cat Lady
Now, over a year later, thanks to a great vet and great friends and family who’ve helped me afford my sick little kitty, Daisy is still here, still taunting Tinks into chasing her to get him in trouble, still sickly but hanging in there. I’m a crazy cat lady, with mugs and sweaters and cat toys to prove it. And when I feel survivor’s guilt, that these are my sister’s cats and she should be here to bask in the juicy kitty love, I tell myself that at least they’re with family, the last living connection to my sister.
When people give me a hard time about staying home with my cats, the expense, giving up writer’s conferences and Comic Con, I brush it off. I hold tight to Daisy when she clings to me like a little monkey baby. I pay attention to Tinks when he needs me to and leave him alone when he doesn’t. For someone who’s not religious, a promise to a sister on her deathbed is as close as I come to the sacred. What could be more important than this?
I even bought a house with my sister Beth and committed to staying in it so our sister’s cats would have a permanent place to live. Commitment, hard and scary though it is, no longer feels like it’s choking me or like a burden. It feels like home.